You’ve heard of hiding things in plain sight.

The CIA took that idea and threw it straight into the jungle – and into places far less pleasant.

This week in The Collection, I’m pulling out two of the most creative, most disgusting, and most brilliant pieces of spy gear to come out of the Vietnam War era. One involves a pile of tiger poop. The other involves, well... you.

I have two of each. And once you see them, you don’t forget them.

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First – The Turds That Talked

The United States had a serious problem in Vietnam.

North Vietnamese forces were moving troops, weapons, and supplies south along the Ho Chi Minh Trail – a massive network of jungle roads and paths running through Laos and Cambodia. The U.S. needed to track that movement and stop it. But the jungle canopy was so thick that satellites and aircraft couldn’t see through it. You couldn’t spot a truck from the sky if the trees were hiding it completely.

So the CIA went to the ground.

They developed the Seismic Intruder Detection Device – a small, battery-powered sensor that picked up ground vibrations from passing trucks and soldiers and transmitted that data up to relay aircraft circling overhead. From there, it went to targeting teams who used it to call in strikes.

The sensor worked. The problem was disguising it.

Leave a small electronic device sitting on a jungle floor and an enemy soldier will notice it, grab it, and the mission is over. It had to look like something already there. Something nobody would touch.

They didn’t get there on the first try. Early versions were disguised as dog droppings and monkey feces – until someone pointed out there were no wild dogs running the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and monkey leavings weren’t convincing enough up close. They went back to the drawing board, studied the actual environment, and landed on tiger.

That’s where the TURDSID came in – which is exactly what the guys running the program called it. The official designation was the T-1151. I call mine the Tiger Poo Transmitter. Because that’s exactly what it is.

CIA technicians molded the sensors to look exactly like tiger droppings. Textured. Painted. Sized right. The outer shell was packed with peat moss to sell the look and feel. Tigers were common in Vietnam at the time, so their tracks and leavings on the jungle floor were a normal sight. Enemy fighters walked right past them.

The X-ray tells the real story. Strip away the peat moss and the carefully molded outer shell and you’re looking at a tightly packed bundle of electronics – transmitter, antenna, battery – all crammed into something the size of a fat cigar. The disguise was crude by design. The engineering inside was anything but.

Each Tiger Poo Transmitter was only about four inches long and less than an inch wide. It broadcast a VHF radio signal that could pinpoint enemy movement along the Trail for days – sometimes weeks – at a time. Small Special Forces teams slipped in to place them, marked the target, and got out. The signal did the rest.

Most people don’t know this part. The Tiger Poo Transmitter wasn’t just a targeting tool. Downed pilots were trained to find one and use it to signal for rescue – interrupting its broadcast in Morse code to call for help. The same device that called in airstrikes could also bring a helicopter to pull you out.

My two Tiger Poo Transmitters sit side by side in the collection. The molds are nearly identical, which tells you how tightly the production was controlled. Very few of these survived – most were lost in the jungle, degraded in the heat and rain, or simply never recovered. Finding one is rare. Having two is something else entirely.

I still think about the meeting where someone had to pitch this idea out loud.

Second – The Kits Nobody Wanted to Use (But Were Glad to Have)

Now we get to the part of the post where I apologize in advance.

Also in the collection: two CIA rectal escape and evasion kits from the Vietnam era.

If you’re a pilot shot down over enemy territory, getting captured is the nightmare. You need tools to survive, evade, and escape. But when enemy soldiers capture you, they search everything you’re carrying.

Everything.

The CIA’s solution? Hide the tools somewhere no one is going to search.

These kits were designed to be concealed internally – yes, internally – packed into a small, sealed capsule built for exactly that purpose. Every piece inside was machined so carefully that there wasn’t a single sharp edge that could cause injury. The container sealed tight so nothing could get in or leak out. That took serious engineering.

Inside: a saw blade, a drill bit, a pair of pliers, a lock pick, a file, and a screwdriver. Everything you’d need to work through a restraint, open a lock, or get past the hardware standing between you and the door. Every item earned its space. Nothing was in there by accident.

The International Spy Museum has them in their collection. I have two. Both are the same configuration, from the same period. Same capsule, same tool layout, same logic behind the design. Someone tested this. Someone refined it. Someone decided this is the kit that goes out the door with the men going into harm’s way.

Pilots and special operations personnel were briefed on how to carry them. Those briefings were, by all accounts, deeply uncomfortable for everyone in the room.

But here’s what these kits actually were: not a weapon, not a gadget, not a James Bond toy. They were a way to make your captors wrong. To make “he’s been searched, he has nothing” just slightly not true. A saw blade and a lock pick hidden where no one thought to look could be the difference between a prison cell and making it home.

Look at both pieces side by side and you see the same mission running through them. A Tiger Poo Transmitter on the jungle floor calling in a rescue signal. A sealed capsule of tools hidden on the man himself. Different problems, same answer: give the pilot every possible chance to come home.

And sometimes, that’s all the edge you need.

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These pieces are part of my private intelligence collection, which spans CIA, KGB, Stasi, OSS, SOE, and French Resistance artifacts. Every Friday, I pull something out and tell its story.

If this is your kind of thing, subscribe and share. New artifacts every week.

I’ll also be at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. on May 16 for a signing of my new book. Come find me.

Dexter Ingram spent decades inside the national security world and even longer collecting what it left behind. Cipher devices. Spy cameras. Escape kits. His collection spans CIA, KGB, Stasi, OSS, SOE, and French Resistance artifacts. He serves on the Advisory Board of the International Spy Museum. He is the author of The Spy Archive: Hidden Lives, Secret Missions, and the History of Espionage (2025) and National Security Careers: The Ultimate Guide to Breaking In – Real Stories, Career Paths, and Insider Lessons (April 2026), an Amazon #1 New Release in Terrorism.

Three objects. One operation. None of them look like what they are.

French spy stamps. A 1943 program from Josephine Baker's performance in Tunis – sponsored by Charles de Gaulle to raise money for the French Resistance. And a one-way radio disguised as a picture frame, her photograph in the front. This short video from the International Spy Museum is me walking through a few of these items and what they mean. A good place to start with The Collection.

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A tie clip. A wristwatch. A battery. A coil of wire. Nothing here looks dangerous. That’s the whole idea.

During the Cold War, the most powerful spy tool wasn’t a missile or a satellite. It was a microphone small enough to hide inside something you’d never think twice about.

How a Bug Works

Every bugging operation worked the same way regardless of which country was running it. You need power. You need something that picks up sound. You need something that sends that sound somewhere. And you need someone nearby writing it all down.

That’s this entire photo. The battery powers the transmitter. The transmitter feeds the microphone. The wire carries the signal out. Down the street, in a car or a safe house, someone is listening.

The hard part was never the technology. The hard part was making it disappear. While the U.S. and Soviet Union raced to build bigger nuclear weapons, their spy agencies raced to build smaller microphones. That competition never made the news. It never stopped either.

Same Tool. Three Different Targets.

The CIA targeted foreign enemies. Embassies. Hotel rooms. Conference tables where decisions got made behind closed doors. When you couldn’t get a person inside a room, you put a device inside instead. The watch, the tie clip, the pen – all of it built to go places American officers couldn’t walk into.

The KGB bugged almost everyone. Foreign diplomats. Their own people stationed overseas. Visitors who thought they were guests. The KGB believed every conversation had value, and they had the manpower to prove it. Some of their operations ran for years before anyone found the device.

The Stasi bugged their own people.

That one line is what separates them from everyone else. East Germany’s secret police built the most suffocating surveillance program in history. They didn’t chase foreign spies. They went after teachers. Priests. Factory workers. Teenagers. The same wire in this photo was run through the walls of apartments belonging to people who hadn’t done a single thing wrong. The Stasi didn’t care. You didn’t have to be guilty. You just had to exist.

Who Was the KGB?

The KGB was the Soviet Union’s intelligence and security service from 1954 until the USSR collapsed in 1991. They ran foreign spies, protected Soviet leaders, monitored citizens, and arrested people who questioned the government. The Communist Party stayed in power as long as it did partly because the KGB made sure anyone who pushed back paid a serious price.

That is the difference between an intelligence service in a democracy and one in a dictatorship. A democracy targets foreign threats. The KGB targeted its own people just as often. I have worked counterterrorism in spaces shaped by the KGB’s legacy. Their reach was real, and it lasted long after 1991.

Who Were the Stasi?

The Stasi ran East Germany’s secret police from 1950 until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. At their peak they had one officer or informant for every 63 citizens. No surveillance state in history has matched that. They recruited neighbors to spy on neighbors. Parents to report on children. Spouses to inform on each other.

East Germans who tried to cross into West Germany were shot at the border. Those who stayed and quietly complained faced something worse. The Stasi called it Zersetzung – decomposition. Instead of arresting someone, they destroyed the person’s life without ever showing their hand. Moved objects in their apartment so they felt like they were losing their mind. Spread rumors. Cost them their job. Poisoned every relationship they had. No arrest. No trial. Just a life quietly taken apart from the inside.

The wire in this photo is not just Cold War hardware. In East Germany it was used against people whose only crime was wanting to live freely. I have met people who lived through it. The damage doesn’t go away.

Now It’s Your Turn.

Three services. One technology. Three completely different ideas about who the enemy was.

Which item in this photo do you think belonged to the CIA, the KGB, or the Stasi – and why?

Drop your best guess in the comments. Next Friday I’ll break down every piece – where it came from, how it was used, and what happened to the people on the other end of it. Some of those stories I know personally.

Last Week: Did You Find Them All?

Here is what was hiding in that matchbox photo.

The Safe House box sitting right in the center. The real U.S. government Rewards for Justice matchbook offering $2 million for a terrorist. The WWII counterintelligence gum box warning people not to talk. The Checkpoint Charlie matchbox from Friedrichstraße 43–45 Berlin. The worn Arabic script box. And The Eagle Safety Matches – which was not matches at all. That was the second OSS matchbox camera. The label was the cover.

On the Bond side: GoldenEye from Fleming’s Jamaica estate. The One & Only Ocean Club from Casino Royale. The SPYs bar matchbook from Washington DC.

The watering holes: Harry’s New York Bar in Paris where OSS officers met during the occupation. Bar Hemingway at the Ritz. The Monocle on D Street DC. Shelly’s Back Room. And Swan Vestas, which shows up in more intelligence memoirs than any other match brand in history.

Fifteen connections. Most people found five or six. Now you know all of them.

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Dexter Ingram spent decades inside the national security world and even longer collecting what it left behind. His collection spans CIA, KGB, Stasi, OSS, SOE, and French Resistance artifacts. He serves on the Advisory Board of the International Spy Museum and is the author of The Spy Archive and National Security Careers: The Ultimate Guide to Breaking In.

Somewhere in this photo are two matchboxes that are not matchboxes.

Picture yourself at a checkpoint in Occupied France, 1944. A German soldier scans you top to bottom. In your jacket pocket sits a box of matches. He waves you through. What he missed could change the course of the war.

Eastman Kodak built two covert cameras for the OSS that year, each designed to disappear inside a standard wooden matchbox. They called one Camera X and the other simply The Matchbox. Both shot 16mm film, both delivered 34 exposures per roll, and both were precise enough to photograph a face, a troop formation, or a classified document laid flat on a table.

What made them remarkable was a single engineering decision. The film had to be loaded and unloaded in complete darkness. Not dim light. Total darkness. The controls were built to work entirely by feel, no looking down, no adjusting. The OSS did not do that for convenience. They did it because they knew exactly what kind of moment their agents would be in when they needed to use one.

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The cameras left Kodak plain. Before a mission, an OSS officer would choose a label that matched wherever the agent was going and press it to the wooden shell. That decision was that specific. The plain black Camera X you see here was either never deployed or came back without its cover. The other one, circled below, tells a different story. Its label reads “The Eagle Safety Matches,” a British brand. Someone chose that label for a reason, for a place, for a person. That cover was the difference between blending in and being caught.

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Both cameras came from a world shaped by Camp X, a secret British training school on the shore of Lake Ontario in Canada, where OSS agents learned silent combat, sabotage, Morse code, and the kind of deep cover that keeps you alive behind enemy lines. The instructors were so relentless that trainees nicknamed it “the school of mayhem and murder.” The CIA paid tribute decades later by naming their own training facility in Virginia “The Farm,” borrowed directly from the farmland where Camp X once stood.

I found both cameras at a rare OSS-focused auction in the UK. That alone tells you something. Eighty years later, on the other side of the Atlantic, two pieces of American intelligence history were still quietly changing hands.

I have been in enough operational environments to understand the weight of the decision these cameras represent. One plain. One covered. A choice made before someone left the wire.

Both cameras survived. The people who carried them did not always leave much of a record behind.

Now it is your turn.

There are more spy connections hiding in this photo than you might think. Some you will spot right away. At least one will catch you off guard.

How many can you find? Drop your count in the comments. Next Friday I will break down every single one.

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Dexter Ingram spent decades inside the national security world and even longer collecting what it left behind. Cipher devices. Spy cameras. Escape kits. His collection spans CIA, KGB, Stasi, OSS, SOE, and French Resistance artifacts. He serves on the Advisory Board of the International Spy Museum. He is the author of The Spy Archive and National Security Careers: The Ultimate Guide to Breaking In – Real Stories, Career Paths, and Insider Lessons, just released.

Next Friday: did you find them all? The answers are coming, along with the next piece from the collection.

I collect the tools of espionage. The real ones.

It started at a bazaar. I had just wrapped up a Navy flight exercise in Europe and was doing what any reasonable person does after weeks of high-stakes operations -- wandering through a market, looking at nuggets of history from a place far from where I grew up. That’s when I spotted it. A Soviet telegraph device, sitting there between someone’s old dishes and what I’m pretty sure was a stolen bicycle seat.

I picked it up, turned it over in my hands, and thought: somebody sat with this thing and tapped out messages that could have gotten people killed. Maybe they did. The person is gone. The telegraph ended up in my bag for twelve dollars.

That was it. I was done.

Here’s the thing about traveling, collecting, and actually living in different cultures -- the languages, the food, the customs, the religions -- it changes you in ways no classroom ever could. It shaped my career. It shaped how I see the world. And it’s a big part of why this archive exists.

Every object in it was made by someone, used by someone, and survived when it probably shouldn’t have. These aren’t props. They aren’t replicas. They are the actual tools of people who operated in the shadows of World War II, the Cold War, and every quiet conflict in between. The hands that touched them belonged to case officers, resistance fighters, double agents, and analysts who never got a medal or a headline. Some of them got a lot worse.

For over two decades, I worked inside the world’s most sensitive counterterrorism and intelligence operations. I led coalitions, tracked networks, and sat in rooms that will never appear in any newspaper. Along the way, I started collecting the artifacts that tell the stories those rooms couldn’t.

CIA. KGB. Stasi. OSS. SOE. Cipher devices spanning centuries of secrets. One of the largest private intelligence archives outside government hands.

Every piece has a story. Every story has a lesson. And every lesson connects to the world we’re living in right now.

Every Friday, we pull an item from the archive and take you inside it. Not as a museum exhibit. We’re starting the conversation with someone who spent a career in the shadows and collected the receipts.

Pull up a chair. Class is in session.

-- Dexter

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